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The greatest underestimation of this election is the length to which people like Mitt Romney are willing to go to protect their fortunes.

Like Charlton Heston, we'll have to pry it from their "cold, dead, fingers". We commoners believe they've become tax avoidaholics who are in dire need of a serious American intervention followed by a strict twelve step program. Ninety meetings in 90 days.

Think about the expense and trouble they've gone to just to avoid paying a proportionate share of taxes on the incomes they've earned from this great system of democracy we share. These patriots have spent obscene amounts of money on negative political advertising, tried to squash the right of voters to vote in state after state, threatened employees with their jobs if they don't vote the way the boss tells them to vote, and destroyed new voter registrations of the opposing party. When you look at the totality of their combined cash and conspiracies, in the long run wouldn't it have been cheaper to pony up with the rest of us Americans to pay their fair share?

It used to be corporations accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue collected. It's now down to nine percent. Used to be personal income taxes imposed on those who benefited most from the American system of capitalism was over 70 percent. Now, those who have it, hide it - many times in offshore and onshore tax havens. Conservative estimates suggest $21-32 trillion is being hoarded, far more than our current deficit. And the more they are allowed to hoard and hide rather than invest in the country that made them wealthy, the longer it will take for our economy to bounce back.

If President Obama closes the deal in the remaining days of the campaign we still have a chance to change these tax avoidaholics into productive and rehabilitated members of our society. Here's hoping for change!

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